How To Make People Hate You While Driving: A Primer

Congratulations. You are capable of operating a motor vehicle on the road. You’re awesome. You know the rules of the road, the etiquette you’re supposed to follow, and the ways to stay safe in any situation. But you have a burning desire to be something more. You want to be a dickhead to other drivers. The problem is, you don’t know how. You’re a nice person who loves following rules, but you’re looking to change the way you behave to others.

Never fear. I’m here to help you. I’ve compiled five tips from years of watching other drivers be idiots on the road. If you follow these five suggestions, you’ll be hated by your fellow commuters in no time.

1. Don’t Use Your Turn Signal While Changing Lanes

Electric turn signals were first installed in cars in 1907 and were widely installed in cars in the 1940s. They’ve widely been proven to increase safety on the roads and are an invaluable resource to communicating with other drivers on the roads. If you really want to start making people hate you on the roads, the first thing you need to do is to stop using them. Remember that turn signals aren’t about remembering where you need to go. You obviously know where you’re going. Turns signals are used to help other people realize your intentions about where your car will be going next. You don’t need these. This is especially true if you’re driving a crotch rocket-style motorcycle on a crowded highway at rush hour, as you don’t need to obey lanes. You’re better than lanes, so why signal?

2. Merging Like A Dick Is A Fine Art

Ever heard of the asshole lane? Most people know exactly what I’m talking about, however if you’re truly talented at making other drivers hate you, this term is likely lost on you. That’s because it’s known as a passing lane to you. If you’re still unaware, see the picture below.

Image credit: evapohler.com

To most, the fact that the lane on the right is ending means that you should zipper merge with the traffic in the lane immediately to your left. But if you want other drivers to truly hate you, this means you should go as fast as you can to pass as many cars as you can before asserting your dominance and cutting in front of drivers in the lane to your left. Bonus points if you commit this action immediately after a stoplight.

3. Speed Limit > Flow of Traffic

Becoming a driver hated by their fellow drivers is not merely about going fast at all times. In some instances, it’s a matter of carefully following the laws set forth by local jurisdictions. Let’s say that you’re on a major highway. The speed limit on this highway is 60 miles per hour, however flow of traffic is routinely 70-75 MPH. You can’t let other people break the law! It’s time for you to make sure you’re going exactly 60. In the left lane. With your hazard lights on. After all, safety first.

4. Animals Are Targets

Some of you have been reading this list and likely thinking to yourselves, “Hey…I want people to hate me while I drive, but I don’t live near a ton of people for the first three items on this list to be relevant to me. How can you help me be an asshole?” Never fear. I have a solution.

Growing up, I lived in an area where wildlife made its way onto roads on a very regular basis. Occasionally, your vehicle would make contact with a bird/raccoon/deer/etc, and most sane human beings would feel bad. After all, you don’t want to hit an animal with your car, right? If you want people to hate you while driving, this is exactly what you want to do. Not only should you try to hit animals, you should go out of your way to try to run over that groundhog skittering its way off the road. I mean, doing so in no way makes you a deplorable human being or anything of the sort.

5. Assured Clear Stopping Distance Is Overrated

When all else fails and the other items on this list aren’t applicable to your driving situation, there will always be one never-fail item that will make other drivers on the road hate you with the fiery passion of a thousand suns: not obeying the rules of assured clear stopping distance. While that term is a fairly objective term to anyone with common sense and basic human decency, to the asshole driver, if a space is large enough for his or her car to fit into, then the car belongs there. Never mind being able to stop without hitting that person. Never mind that rain and snow change the distance needed to stop a car. Never mind that it takes a lot longer to safely stop a car from 70 MPH than 15 MPH. You’re the most hated driver on the road. Go right ahead and shove your car into a space that would barely fit your car in a parallel parking scenario. It’s the least you can do in order to cement your place in the underbelly of society.

Considering the majority of the world drives on the right side of the road, I would say that it is you who drives on the incorrect side. Pretty much everything I put on this list was standard practice in the Philippines. I’m fairly sure I’d die of road rage if I lived there.

Okay I have to say, I got used to walking on the left, using the left escalator in the tube terminals, etc REALLY SUPER INSANELY FAST when I was in England–it pretty much came naturally. And I’m right-handed, so it’s not that. As much as this maybe makes me a bad American, I have to agree that the right side is the “wrong side of the road.”

I didn’t realize how stupidly polite Northwest drivers are until I moved away. People drive like dicks. Seriously, like it might as well be a literal dick steering the vehicle. Hampton Roads, VA is notorious for their terrible traffic too, so it’s a bunch of dicks operating 3,000 lb machinery very, very closely packed together, and across a LOT of 2-lane bridges/tunnels.

I think that Arizona was about on par with the Midwest in terms of their drivers. On one hand, Arizona drivers signal and tend to allow you to leave reasonable stopping distance between other drivers. On the other hand, they don’t know how to drive in any weather but pure sunlight and the state tends to be filled with tourists who driver under the speed limit. It’s practically a wash.

I’m guilty of #3 at times…I’m sorry, I cannot go 15-20 miles over the speed limit just because someone else has hundreds of dollars to blow on a ticket.

But hubs & I were JUST talking about #5! We did two fairly decent trips this month (one 3 hours away, the other 7 hours away) and literally any time there was *a* car length in between us & another vehicle, someone inevitably squeezed into it. Cue the rage.

If there’s one I’m guilty of, it’s also #3. That said, I think there’s a fine line between going slow to stay close to the speed limit and being unsafe on the highway because you’re going so slow. The amount of traffic around is part of it. If you’re the only car going 10 under the flow of traffic on a heavy traffic day, you become a clear and present danger to those around you.